This particularly fine art Emoji doesn't focus on a specific piece of art, but rather beloved painter and star of Joy of Painting Bob Ross, and that's fine by us. The perpetually soothing and upbeat Ross was best known for his natural landscapes and the "happy little trees" that sprang up from his paintbrush.

In a multi-stage installation called Inopportune, Cao Guo-Qiang featured a series of cars surrounded by glowing rods that looked like a series of frozen explosions, freeze-frames from a tumbling vehicle.

IN 1974, Yugoslavia perfomance artist Marina Abramovic participated in a daring and disturbing experiment where she offered viewers a table full of objects that could either cause pleasure (a rose) or pain (a knife, a whip, and even a gun and bullet) and announced she would not resist anything they did for six hours. Although the audience was initially friendly, the longer Abramovic remained passive, the more violent and violating they became, even threatening her with a loaded gun.

In Burden's controversial 1971 performance piece, he was literally shot in his left arm by an assistant with a .22 rifle. His other acts of performance act have included crawling through 50 feet of broken glass with his hands tied behind him, and crucifying himself on a Volkswagen Beetle.

An experimental composition by musician John Cage, 4'33 is a three-movement piece -- and one that the performer is never meant to play. Instead, listeners to hear to the sounds that the silence allows them to hear.

First created by artist Judy Chicago in 1979, this installation imagines a table set for important women of myth and history, range from Hatshepsut to Virginia Woolf, in order to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record."

For the truly tech/text-savvy, having entire text message conversations using only emoji characters is an art form all its own. Now a group of art-smart folks on Twitter have taken that concept to the next level by recreating famous works of art using just the Japanese picture characters of emoji.

The meme — which you can follow on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #EmojiArtHistory — launched after Brooklyn-based artist Man Bartlett saw a Tumblr post of texts recreating the work of famous artists out of emoji. Inspired, he posted his own emoji version of artist Chris Burden’s Shoot (a performance piece wherein the artist was literally shot) on Twitter on Monday night, adding the hashtag and sparking a new art-geek meme.

The instant popularity definitely surprised Bartlett, but he adds that the speedy nature of Twitter — as opposed to Tumblr — mixed with the new(ish) art form of emoji storytelling created a lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

“I chalk that up to being in the right place at the right time, giving it an easy hashtag and having some interesting people jump right in early on (e.g. Magda Sawon and JiaJia Fei),” the 32-year-old multidisciplinary artist said in an e-mail to Wired. “Also the fact that it ‘moved’ to Twitter. I definitely think the fact it’s there… keeps people thinking/interacting/evolving/sharing the meme in real time. So hopefully yes, it could lead to ‘original’ artistic creation via emoji.”

‘It’s just a fun way to look at pictograms and (mostly recent) art history in a new way. And if there’s one thing contemporary art needs more of, it’s fun.’

— artist Man Bartlett

Not all of the emoji creations reference exact works by any particular artist; some just evoke the particular artist’s style. For example, a series of trees, nature scenes, and happy clouds means “Bob Ross.” One wiseacre even posted a squiggly line next to “Frida,” referencing Frida Kahlo’s signature eyebrow(s). It’s also, Bartlett notes, a good time.

Turning serious works of art into emojis creates a way for people to take work usually hung in museums and talked about in lecture halls and makes it part of the Twitter conversation, and that can’t be a bad thing. “It’s been so enjoyable to see so many people participate in the nerdiest of art nerd ways…. It’s just a fun way to look at pictograms and (mostly recent) art history in a new way,” Bartlett noted. “And if there’s one thing contemporary art needs more of, it’s fun.”

Check out a collection of our favorite #EmojiArtHistory so far– including a few Bartlett sent Wired from his iPhone – in the gallery above.